The Public Health Responsibility Deal in England was launched in 2011 by the Department of Health as a public–private partnership. Together with government, industry and other partners developed a set of commitments or ‘pledges’ including associated targets and actions which business, health, community and public organisations can commit to in order to improve health. The health topics addressed were food, alcohol, physical activity and health at work. The featured article from a university unit funded by the Department of Health to evaluate the Responsibility Deal presents an analysis of the pledges in the alcohol domain.

The Public Health Responsibility Deal for alcohol in England offers a set of pledges which alcohol industry and other bodies can choose to commit to with a view to improving health.

Rather than being prompted by the deal, the actions committed to were usually already done or underway. Even if implemented, acompanion paper has judged the pledges unlikely to significantly improve health.

The pledge on lower strength alcohol products could be effective in certain circumstances, but government calculations that it helped remove 1.3 billion units of alcohol from the UK market have been disputed.

Whatever its effects on consumption, the Responsibility Deal seems to have helped forestall a more effective measure – a minimum per unit price for alcohol.

Although at the time of the featured study there were eight alcohol pledges, it focused on four key pledges: A1 – alcohol labelling (92 signatories); A4 – tackling underage alcohol sales (63 signatories); A6 – advertising and marketing alcohol (92 signatories); and A8 – alcohol unit reduction (32 signatories) panel below. These were selected because they cover much of what is proposed in the remaining pledges.

In the years leading up to 2009, Intel tried a number of popular approaches to tame its soaring health care costs. To encourage employees and their families to be more involved in the purchase of their care and aware of its actual cost, the company implemented “consumer-driven health care” offerings such as higher-deductible plans with lower premiums, tax-advantaged accounts, and tiered-provider options. To save employees time and improve access, it opened primary care clinics at Intel work sites in Oregon, New Mexico, and Arizona. It offered wellness and fitness incentives, including optional annual health checks that would reduce premiums or deductibles, health coaches, and free on-site fitness classes.

PALMSPRINGS, CALIF.—Given that fibromyalgia pain stems primarily from the central nervous system (CNS), nonpharmacologic therapies may provide greater benefits than opioids and narcotic analgesics, according to a presenter at the 2015 American Pain Society Annual Scientific Meeting.

Fibromyalgia, now largely considered a lifelong CNS disorder—and the second most common rheumatic disorder after osteoarthritis—is still widely misunderstood and can be difficult to diagnose, according to Daniel Clauw, MD, professor of anesthesiology at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

“Fibromyalgia can be thought of both as a discreet disease and also as a final common pathway of pain centralization and chronification,” said Dr. Clauw during a plenary session on the neurologic basis for fibromyalgia. “The condition can be hard to diagnose if one isn’t familiar with classic symptoms because there isn’t a single cause and no outward signs.”

In a great article published last week, Stan Woods of Velocity Partners offered his thoughts on how fast marketing has developed over the past few months, and the new marketing roles this change has created.

In his closing paragraph, Woods distinguishes between the creative-driven and data-driven marketers by referring to them as “marketing artists” and “marketing scientists,” respectively. Although a slight oversimplification, these distinctions hold a lot of truth about the current divide that exists within many marketing departments.

Historical days like the 238th anniversary of American independence offer a chance to get some perspective of how far we have come in improving medical standards and access to healthcare. These articles, here and here offer some details if you want specifics. But a new report offers four potential scenarios that explore how public health will shake out in the next 16 years, from hugely optimistic to bitterly depressing.

The government should impose a new levy on tobacco companies to help pay for the harm they cause, according to 120 public health organisations launching a proposed new strategy against smoking.

By 2035, the proportion of the population who smoke should be brought down from 18.5% to just 5%, says the group, which is led by Action on Smoking and Health (Ash), Cancer Research UK and the British Heart Foundation.

They hope their proposed five-year strategy document, Smoking Still Kills, will be taken up by government in the same way that their previous reports have informed government policy. In 2008, they published Beyond Smoking Kills, named after the Labour government’s 1998 white paper, Smoking Kills, which proposed many measures that later became law, such as the ban on tobacco displays in shops.

Smoking costs the NHS at least £2bn a year and a further £10.8bn in wider costs to society, including social-care costs of more than £1bn, says the document. With the public health budget now set to lose £200m a year, the group says that the tobacco industry should pay an annual levy to offset those costs and assist with the effort of stopping young people picking up the habit as well as helping smokers to quit.

Health promotion research can be broad in scope and can cover a vast array of topics, settings and populations. As Co-Director of the Centre for Health Promotion Research at Leeds Beckett University, I can vouch for this diversity. Just looking over the past few years, our Centre’s research portfolio includes studies focussing on prison health; volunteering and health; burnout in employees; e-cigarettes; physical activity in children; homelessness; mental health; condom distribution schemes; toothbrushing; self-care; poverty; climate change…..the list goes on.

While at first glance, these projects may seem completely disparate they all, in fact, constitute health promotion research. For me, the litmus test is whether a research project gives us greater understanding of the determinants of health. If a study has the potential to help understanding of health inequalities and (more importantly) potentially provide evidence-based policy and practice implications to reduce health inequalities in communities – then this, in my view, constitutes health promotion research. Critics would argue that such a definition is useless as conceivably ‘anything’ and ‘everything’ can have impacts on health – but health promotion itself is a very broad-church, highly multidisciplinary, drawing on a range of academic disciplines. Health promotion research, therefore, must mirror this.

May is National Stroke Awareness Month in the UK. The Stroke Association and NHS official data show that the number of middle aged people suffering a stroke increased dramatically last year. In England, men aged 40 to 54 saw a rise of 46% over the last fifteen years, from the year 2000 to now. That’s 4,260 men in 2000 to 6,221 last year. Women of the same age saw a 30% rise, and for all those aged 20-64, there was a 25% increase. So the message seems to be that people of working age are experiencing strokes, and that strokes are happening at younger ages. The reasons put forward for these rises – at least in the popular media and by the government – are obesity and sedentary lifestyles. The Stroke Association is quite right to point out the dangers of strokes, and to publish information so that people can educate themselves about risks and lifestyle. However, there is perhaps more to the statistics and more to the discussion of causes that needs to be interrogated.

Despite the growing prominence of global challenges, such as climate change, cross-border health threats, security risks, and financial crises, most development-oriented funds are spent on individual programs in single countries.

Licensed hairdressing facilities are prevalent in communities nationwide and represent a unique and promising channel for delivering public health interventions. The Rhode Island Smokefree Shop Initiative tested the feasibility of using these facilities to deliver smoking policy interventions statewide. A statewide survey of hairdressing facilities was followed by interventions targeted to the readiness level (high/low) of respondents to adopt smoke-free policies.

Researchers from the North Carolina BEAUTY and Health Project conducted an observational study in 10 North Carolina beauty salons to gain insight into naturally occurring conversations between cosmetologists and customers, and to assess features of the salon environment that might be used to inform the development of salon-based health promotion interventions. Results revealed that the social environment of a salon is a place where cosmetologists and customers talk openly about many subjects, including health. Information, advice, appraisal, humor, and empathy are typically shared in these health conversations. Several features of the physical environment of the salon may be mobilized to support health—access to healthy foods, snacks, and beverages; smoking restrictions; and availability of print or video materials, signs, or displays that include healthy messages. Implications for planning salon-based health promotion interventions—including the training of licensed cosmetologists to deliver health messages—are discussed in light of these findings.

Based on the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee’s recent recommendations, this Viewpoint urges the US Department of Agriculture and US Department of Health and Human Services to remove limits on total fat consumption in their 2015 Dietary Guideline to promote consumption of healthful fat.

In England, children's exposure to second-hand smoke has declined by 79% since 1998, with continuing progress since smoke-free legislation in 2007. An emerging social norm in England has led to the adoption of smoke-free homes not only when parents are non-smokers, but also when they smoke.

“Two chocolate bars a day can SLASH the risk of heart disease and stroke,” the Daily Mirror reports.

The headline is prompted by the results from a large study involving Norfolk residents, investigating how chocolate is linked tocardiovascular diseases. These are diseases that affect the heart and blood vessels, such as coronary heart disease and stroke.

By comparing the highest chocolate consumers with complete chocolate abstainers, they found that chocolate was linked to a lower risk of stroke and cardiovascular disease. However, the risk for coronary heart disease was not statistically significant, so the aforementioned results could have been down to chance.

The concept of the ePatient - someone who is equipped, enabled and empowered by digital technology and social networks to make better decisions about their health care (and that of their loved ones) - is no longer a novelty. We have become increasingly familiar with the term and its leading proponents over the past few years. What is perhaps more novel is the idea that the ePatient of the future will be the norm rather than the exception.

New technologies will enable all of us to monitor our health and gather sophisticated data which in turn will empower us to interact with our healthcare providers in a partnership. Forced to increasingly take responsibility for our own care in a complex system, digitally savvy health consumers will combine information from doctors, the Web, electronic medical records and other sources to “hack” the health system to educate ourselves, navigate loopholes and ultimately get better, lower cost and faster care.

How this will come about is the subject of a new book by Rohit Bhargava (author ofLikeonomics: The Unexpected Truth Behind Earning Trust, Influencing Behavior, and Inspiring Action)and healthcare futurist Fard Johnmar. Featuring original research and stories of healthcare innovators from across the world, ePatient 2015: 15 Surprising Trends Changing Health Care acts as a guide to the rapid changes taking place in health. It shares 15 trends that are poised to fundamentally change the way health and medical care is delivered and received in the near future.

I recently interviewed Fard Johnmaron the main themes presented in the book. I started by asking him what he thinks is the biggest challenge facing health care today?

As a stimulant found in tea, coffee and chocolate, caffeine is part of everyday life in the UK. However, too much caffeine can cause problems such as sleep disturbance. Energy drinks containing high levels of caffeine are a more recent development.

This briefing paper sets out what schools need to know about caffeine use by children and young people. It includes case studies of two schools (primary and secondary) who found that caffeine and energy drinks use was a problem for their pupils and how they addressed this.

This briefing paper is part of a series produced by Mentor ADEPIS on alcohol and drug education and prevention, for teachers and practitioners.

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